Dirt Divas Part 1

August 08, 2008, 7:49PM

Photography by Bruce Ely

She grew up here, riding horseback in the hills, chasing cattle through green carpets of pasture in the shadow of the rugged Wallowa Mountains. But Cory Carman had plans, ones that didn't include the northeast Oregon ranch her great-grandfather claimed in a land trade back in 1913.

By age 8, she was saving for a trip to Europe – who knew where or when, but she was going. At 18, she graduated with a group of 19 from Wallowa High and headed to Stanford, aiming for a career in public policy. In time she was working on Capitol Hill, as a deputy press officer for the House Ways and Means Committee.

She figured that old saying – that some kids are born with ranching in their blood – didn't include her, not now at least. Cattle could wait until retirement, when she'd return to the Wallowa Valley after a brilliant career.

Then 9/11 happened. She moved to California, took a job managing a restaurant, and after a year came home to the ranch for a break – a detour before more policy work, she thought.

When her uncle got injured, she stayed on to help out with the cattle. A few months turned into six. She started writing a business plan for raising grass-fed beef, a more sustainable method of ranching she'd heard about back in college.

And she met a local guy.

Dave Flynn was managing a ranch 40 minutes away and trying his hand at grass-fed beef. He called Carman, ostensibly to ask if she'd help him set up a marketing plan, then invited her along on a trip with two steers that were ready to butcher.

"Our first date," laughs Carman, 28, "was a trip to the slaughterhouse. It's always been about the grass-fed beef, but things have gotten much more complicated since then."

They married on Carman Ranch, had a son, and last fall, twins Ione and Emmett joined 3-year-old Roan.

Now the two tend 160 registered Angus and Hereford cattle owned by Carman and her uncle, including 30 grass-fed steers of their own.

For six years running, they've sold their Wallowa Valley grass-fed beef, which is leaner and higher in beneficial fats than supermarket meat, and raised in a way that affords environmental and public health benefits – a carnivore's version of driving a Prius – at farmers markets, and now by the quarter, half or whole animal, to a growing list of Portland families.

"My friends are going, 'What happened? You have three kids and live on a farm in rural Oregon.' "

Life is good, she tells them. Come visit.

Family and ranch life weave together in Wallowa, Oregon, for Cory Carman, who returned to raise grass-fed beef after policy work in Washington, D.C. By raising grass-fed animals, she's improving the health of land her family has run cattle on since 1913, and forging a bond with city folks who buy their meat direct from Carman and her husband, Dave Flynn. “I can't imagine not trying to have some sort of connection with the consumer,” says Carman, who juggles twins Ione and Emmett on delivery day in Southeast Portland.

On a blustery day, Carman works the cell phone in her F-150 pickup, two dogs in the back, a car seat and a Bob the Builder toy in the cab. She and Flynn, 35, are keeping tabs on a stray bull in an upper pasture – he's split off from his herd and crowding against a fence, and Flynn, roaming the ranch on an ATV, checks that he's not in any trouble.

Starting in late spring, when the meadows green up and cows are turned out onto rangeland and irrigated pastures, the two spend hours on horseback or four-wheeler with their two border collies. They check that cows have ample food and water, scout fresh pasture to see if it's ready for grazing, and move the cattle when the time is right.

The system is called management-intensive grazing, where you're part rancher, part botanist, monitoring the ebb and flow of grasses through the season, and moving cattle into the right spot when plants are in their prime.

"You can't control what they eat, you can only control the timing of it," Carman says, of her 1,100-pound mowing machines.

Their grass-fed Angus and Herefords live out their lives at the ranch, not a commercial feedlot. And when it's time to harvest, it happens right here, not a long truck ride away.

In the 1980s when her dad and uncle were running things, "it was all about production, pounds of meat on your cow," Carman says. "Now, you think more about efficiency."

Cattle don't get as fat on grass as they do when they finish out their lives eating corn and grain. Even with fewer pounds of meat than a conventionally raised steer, they pocket more profits by selling them direct to consumers and get the benefit of meeting the folks who eat their beef.

Kent Carman, Cory's uncle, shakes his head at some of their ideas. They have running debates, and usually just agree to disagree.

"I have to say he's really good about understanding that this is what I want to do. And he's seen that we sell them."

She knows firsthand the physical demands and the risks of their work. Carman's father died on the ranch when she was 13, in an equipment accident. He was 40. There was a time, she says, "when I thought I would probably never come back."

She still sees risk and sacrifice, but plenty more benefits to a life on the land.

"You live someplace beautiful. You get to be outside all the time. We can design our own schedules. We get to spend more time with our kids and each other. It's a place where family is important."

Her goal for now, she says, is making her family ranch pencil out.

Along the way, Carman hopes to pave a path for others to make a living in this beautiful valley, to stay here, or choose a life like hers.

"Now more than ever is a really exciting time to be in agriculture. People care where their food comes from. If we don't capitalize on that, we lose control of where our food comes from. Rural communities die out. Who's going to manage this landscape if nobody's out here?"